


We Are All Innocent

by soldieroftroy



Series: Remember Losing Hope [1]
Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, I'll add things as we reach them, M/M, Superfamily, there are so many things involved with this I can't tag them all okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-25 19:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldieroftroy/pseuds/soldieroftroy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once they had mutually decided that children (child, really) were something they wanted, Steve and Tony wasted no time at all in doing their best to become parents. Adopting was the clear choice, and in roughly no time at all they fell in love with a scrawny six-year-old from the Bronx. There was one issue, though--said six-year-old wasn't exactly so thrilled with the idea of adoption thanks to his... colourful past. In the end, it'd be his decision whether he would stay with Steve and Tony. All they could do was hope he stayed.<br/>And then, as is inevitable in this disaster of a family, everything went horrifically wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Quite Mafiosos

**Author's Note:**

> There will be mentions of rather not good things. Most of these things occurred in canon, usually comics, and are adapted to suit the story. You have been warned.  
> A good friend of mine was adopted out of foster care, but he was a rather interesting case. I tried research, but came up a bit confused and more than a bit lacking. Long story short, I'm literally making up most of what's going on as far as the adoption process goes. I'm operating under the idea that Tony and Steve are aware of the process, being potential parents, and Peter knows all about it considering he's been in the system for a while. For this reason, there most likely won't be a proper explanation in the fic itself.  
> Peter lives in a group home with twelve other children, which is run primarily by Miss Baker and Mr Wickson. The group home is for children waiting for foster care. Potential guardians come in and meet with the kids several times to find the best fit, and after a few meetings the potential parents take the child home. The child may choose to return to the group home at any time (this is usually invoked due to unhealthy living conditions such as neglect). After thirty days, if the child agrees, the potential parents may adopt the child.  
> Whew, that's a long note. Okay. On with actual writings now.

The first time he met his parents, he was barely six years old. He and his best friend sat in their shared bedroom, Peter colouring and Wade throwing a rubber ball at the ceiling, when Miss Baker came in with a blond man at her heels. Peter did a double-take upon seeing him—he was so tall that his gaze initially landed on the man’s shoulders rather than his face—and went comically wide-eyed. The blond’s apparent partner, a more reasonably-sized man with rumpled, blackish hair and a rather interesting goatee, came through a few moments later with an uncomfortable sort of smile and hunched shoulders. He leaned back against the doorframe and shoved his hands in the pockets of his trousers, as if unsure what to do with himself, offering both boys a hesitantly polite smile.

Miss Baker smiled at Wade and, in an effort to tame his wild hair, scraped her fingers gently across Peter’s scalp before introducing the two men: Steve, the tall one, and Tony, whose need for a comb was almost as desperate as Peter’s. The small boy said as much and attempted a grin, making Steve chuckle at the bewildered-indignant expression on Tony’s face. Peter ran a hand over his hair and grew a little more relaxed when Tony, playing a mirror, attempted to sort out his own mess of hair before deeming it a lost cause and moving forward to stand beside Steve.

Steve crouched down to the young boy’s level and tilted his head to the side, admiring the colouring of the Ninja Turtle. It’s Donatello, Peter informed, and proudly added that he’s named after an artist—“the famous one, who made paintings.” Other adults would usually roll their eyes at this, but Steve managed to look impressed and commented that Peter must have known a lot of things about the world if he knew Donatello.

Wade growled a quiet apology and took flight, his ears a curious shade of red as he elbowed his way between a monstrously startled Tony and an equally exasperated Miss Baker to race down the stairs.

Peter found him on the roof of the shed an hour and a half later, flattened on his stomach with his face hidden in the make-shift pillow of his arms. Mr Wickson hated when they were up there, but it was essentially Wade’s safe haven. The younger boy sat cross-legged and picked at his shoelaces, waiting patiently.

“They _liked_ you,” Wade groaned after a long while. “They did, I can _tell_!”

“They might’ve liked you, too, if you’d stuck around a bit longer.” He sighed and hugged his knees to his chest. “They’re nice, Wade.”

“They liked you, and now you’re gonna go with them like—like I don’t know what, like you’re a little damn duck or something, following the big ducks—”

“What do ducks have to do with anything?”

Wade carried on as though he heard nothing, flipping onto his back to scowl petulantly at his friend. “Just don’t forget about me, okay? When you’re hanging out with the giant and the mess? Come visit me and junk. They’ll wanna take you, ‘cause you’re adorable.”

The sad part was that Wade was really serious about it all, as though Peter would up and abandon him to go live with some strangers. “Dude. They won’t even want me,” sighed Peter. “They’re two guys; they’ll probably want a little girl to bedazzle or something.” He tried on a grin and socked Wade’s shoulder playfully, only needing a whole half a second’s pause before the older boy broke into a fit of giggles.

“Nah, d’you see the short one? Totally not the pink-and-frilly type.

“Wade. The giant? He looked like he just leapt out of 1942. He’s _definitely_ the pink-and-frilly type.”

Wade sucked in a breath and turned to give Peter a wide-eyed stare. “D’you think they’ve got a time machine? Maybe Steve can take me back to ’42 with him! I could beat up Stalin!”

“Stalin who?”

“Y’know, Stalin! The…” One finger was crooked to act as a moustache, wiggling rather like a worm over Wade’s upper lip while a slew of what was meant to be Russian lurched out of his mouth. “Evil dictator guy?”

~!~

Giant Steve and mussy Tony (as the boys had taken to calling them) came back that Friday, talking animatedly with Miss Baker while Wade and Peter watched from the top of the stairs. Lucy, the shy three-year-old who bit Mr Davis last year when he fostered her and Paul, was twirling in her dress. Her chubby fingers were jammed in her mouth while the other hand clung to Miss Baker’s skirt every few spins to keep her balance. Steve crouched down to her level and flashed a grin, probably complimenting the bow she had managed to put in her hair earlier that morning. The response was a grimace as Lucy and ducked behind Miss Baker, making Steve frown and stand up to exchange a look with Tony.

“You don’t go with them,” Wade ordered quickly, scowling down at them with his forehead resting against the banisters. “Don’t. You can’t, okay? Lu doesn’t even like them, and she likes almost everyone.”

“I won’t, okay? Jeez, Wade, you act like they’re criminals.” Peter huffed quietly and tugged himself to his feet, pulling a frowning Wade up as an afterthought.

“I bet they are. Goatee-guy—”

“Tony.”

“Tony, whatever—I bet he’s in the mafia. Look at his suits! Who even wears suits?” Tony was, admittedly, wearing a suit. The slightly shimmery fabric didn’t scream mafia to Peter, but he just shook his head in silence.

They came up to visit the boys after a while, and Steve prodded Peter into talking about his colourings again. After a long ramble about the Ninja Turtles, Peter turned beet red and quieted with an articulate “and, yeah.” Wade rolled his eyes, but even he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm when Tony made an idle remark concerning the make-shift slingshot Wade had shoved halfway under his pillow.

“Pete?” Wade asked, hushed but unsettlingly serious, later that night as they stared up at the crumbly ceiling. The younger boy grunted in response, turning to look at him questioningly. “If… if you go with them, promise to come visit me, okay?”

“I’m not staying even if they take me, Wade,” he yawned. “You know that.”

Wade made a choked sort of sound in the back of his throat, and for a second Peter thought that he was going to cry. “Don’t. You’ve still got time, Pete, please…”

“You do, too.” The words were forced, turning to sludge in Peter’s mouth. Wade was turning ten soon. The only people that came in looking for ten-year-olds were the ones who wouldn’t be safe to live with anyway. It’s the unspoken truth of the house; the older a child was, the less likely it was that they would ever be adopted. Hank was thirteen when he officially became a McCoy back in the summer, but aside from him the oldest kid the group home had ever had go to a proper family was Annie—and she was only nine and a half at the time.

“Promise me, Parker.” He took a deep, rattling breath. “If they’re okay to you, you stay with them and you come visit me sometimes. Understand?”

“They won’t even want me. Why are we even talking about this like it’s a thing?”

“Please.”

Peter swallowed hard and nodded in the dark. “Yeah, Wade. I’ll visit as much as I can.”

~!~

Steve and Tony visited one more time before Miss Baker pulled Peter aside and told him to pack his bag, smiling that hopeful smile she always got when people came for her kids. She wasn’t a particularly good judge of character, but thankfully the child services workers were and they didn’t usually land with the cruel people who made Miss Baker’s smile turn tight for a while. Wade came home with a cast once and bruises a few times, though, and there was Sara Miscavage who smacked Peter so hard that she broke his cheekbone when he was five, but most of the people hadn’t been outright horrible like them. Miss Baker seemed to really trust them, at least.

Peter didn’t want to go with Tony and Steve when the time came, even though he really, _really_ did.

Wade didn’t come to see Peter off; when Peter went up the stairs to give him the usual bear hug, he ran back to their—his, now—room and slammed the door in the smaller boy’s face. Peter promised through the wood to bring him a cookie or something when he came back, but the words went ignored. A minute passed before Peter repeated himself and trudged back downstairs, half morose at the thought of leaving his best friend without a proper goodbye and half thrilled at the idea of maybe having people who would care for him (for the month that he’d be staying—no matter what he had promised, he wasn’t leaving Wade there alone).

Tony wasn’t wearing one of his mafia suits this time—Steve still looked like he fell out of 1942, though, to be honest—and Peter was rather suddenly struck by the thought that Wade would like them if he tried. He idly twisted the cloth of his sleeve, chewing at the hem while Steve talked to Miss Baker. Tony ignored them both, turning instead to exchange a few words with Peter.

They were leaving before he knew it, stepping into the sharp winter air. Peter could nearly taste the smog in the dense mist, and the traffic was as loud as ever, but he couldn’t help but feel like something was different. Maybe it’s how he was holding onto Steve’s hand or how Tony had slipped Peter’s backpack from his shoulder to carry it on his own, but the familiar fostering routine seemed so foreign this time. A glance over his shoulder at the house and made Peter swallow a sudden pang of loss—deep down, he knew that he wouldn’t be spending another night there, at least not for a while.

By the time they got home (rather, what would suffice for home over the next month), Peter was clinging just as tightly to the leg of Tony’s trousers as he was to Steve’s hand, struggling not to get lost in the mid-afternoon crowd and doing his best not to panic the one time Tony’s steps led him a bit too far away. It took a while, but they finally arrived at the building Tony and Steve called home, which was guarded by a mean-looking bald man in what Wade would undoubtedly call a mafia suit.

Peter hid behind Steve.

They were riding the lift up to their floor ( _what kind of lift had pictures instead of numbers?_ ) when Tony broke the silence, wondering aloud who was home. Peter jumped out of his skin when a disembodied voice responded with the information that someone called Natasha was attempting to get someone called Clint out of the air ducts again ( _again_?) and that Pepper ( _a bell pepper or pepper like the seasoning, or was it Pepper like a name?_ ) would be dropped off in an hour. He guessed that Clint was Steve and Tony’s son, or maybe a nephew considering that nobody had mentioned him, and that Natasha was his babysitter, but didn’t have time to ask before the doors slid opened with a soft _bong_.

Apparently his assumption wasn’t all that far off. Natasha turned out to be a petite, red-haired woman of about Steve’s age who shouted threats at the ceiling in her spare time. The vent near where her in-depth descriptions of evisceration ( _no, Steve, covering Peter’s ears wasn’t necessary for words he couldn’t even understand_ ) were directed toward clattered to the ground, causing Peter to flinch back from his hiding spot behind Steve and very nearly topple over into Tony’s legs. This was followed by the considerably more graceful descent of the equally-grown-up man who could only have been Clint—and Peter’s hiding spot shifting to behind Tony.

Clint didn’t seem to even hear Natasha’s scolding, instead plopping down on the ground in front of Tony with his hand held out to shake. Peter blinked and shuffled a bit to the left, squinting.

“You’re really dusty.”

He shrugged easily, “I spent a few hours in the walls, dust happens.”

It made sense, of course, but Clint was very clearly old enough to be a grown-up, and grown-ups didn’t just sit in walls. Peter shook the still-outstretched hand quickly and muttered his name before resuming pretending that standing behind Tony’s leg would make him invisible.

“Hey, Tash, check out the kid!”

“I’m six. Six isn’t a kid,” he argued weakly, shifting a bit further to the right. (Tony, the traitorous jerk, took a few steps and suddenly Peter was front-and-centre.)

“Shame,” sighed Clint. “I could totally use a kid-buddy to loosen up Meaniepants over there.” He twisted around and stuck his tongue out in Natasha’s direction, because he was a mature adult who climbed around in walls and that was what mature adults did.


	2. Denim Defences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Peter meets a man who hits, Pepper has an Angry Face of Anger, Steve learns how to draw a Ninja Turtle, and Thai food is yummy.

They had migrated to the living room, shoes left in a neat row by the elevator, by the time anyone else joined them. Peter managed to keep silent for the most part, quietly observing from his seat on the couch—which he’d had to fight for, subtly, because it was the one spot in the room where he could see everything and Natasha had gone toward it just as he did—as the four adults conversed.

Well, to be specific, Clint and Natasha were talking in clipped tones that may or may not have been in some eastern European language (it wasn’t French or Spanish, because he didn’t hear any of the twenty-or-so words he knew in either language, but beyond that he had no clue) while Tony talked at Steve about something decidedly baffling. Peter chewed on his sleeve and did his best to appear as though he was following along, but Steve’s eyes went glazed after about twenty seconds so he doubted that his expression showed much more interest.

Both Clint and Natasha fell silent in the same instant, causing everyone else in the room to look at them in surprise. A man in a mafia suit stood with a scowl behind the couch and Clint was rubbing the back of his head, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy. Peter shifted a bit closer to Steve and hugged his knees, as though the denim could blend in with anything around him and make him invisible.

“Don’t antagonise Romanoff,” the man-who-hits said simply, holding a manila folder out for the woman in question to take.

“ _Natasha_ was antagonising _me_ ,” Clint whined in return, though he didn’t exactly help his cause when he flopped into Natasha’s shoulder to skim over the folder’s contents. Man-who-hits pushed him upright again and dropped a second folder into Clint’s lap with a rather _I am not amused_ expression.

“You leave at 1700 hours. Don’t be late,” he added sternly, mostly to Natasha. He nodded a farewell to Tony and Steve in turn, then nodded at Peter without moment of hesitation ( _nope, not to Peter, to the space where Peter sat, because Peter was hiding and he was invisible to the man-who-hits_ ) before turning on his heel and making a swift exit.

“This shouldn’t take long,” murmured Natasha, flipping through the pages of her file. “We should be back by tomorrow evening at the latest.”

“Where are you going?” Peter picked his chin up off his knees and craned his neck a bit, as though that might allow him to see across the room and read the small print. Clint looked up and smiled easily.

“Just doing some stuff for our work, it’s really pretty boring.” For some reason, he doubted that it was boring at all, but if there was one thing he had learned over the past few years it was _Don’t Ask Questions_. He didn’t particularly think that Clint would get angry at him, but then again Clint had just been hit for bickering with Natasha and nobody had moved to protest. He had no idea what went on here.

A woman with red, red, _red_ hair stormed in just as Clint and Natasha slipped out, mouth open to shout (Peter was 98% sure—he’d seen a lot of shouting) before she slid her eyes across the couch and spotted Peter.

“ _Tony_ ,” she said slowly, not moving her gaze from the boy to the man in question.

“Hey, Pep. Have you met Peter? Peter, Pepper; Pepper, Peter. Try saying _that_ ten times fast.” Peter wiggled his fingers in a sort of half-wave before sitting back a bit to hide behind Steve’s arm—Steve was mumbling Tony’s words under his breath to gauge the difficulty of the new tongue-twister. While Tony may have been comfortable enough to joke, Pepper was wearing the universal Angry Face of Anger, and he certainly needed his denim shield to work its magic this time.

“Hi, Peter. Tony, a word?”

“Which one? Catawampus, that’s a nice one—defenestration, there’s another—but you’re gonna have to give me a little guidance here. Any sort of word in particular you’re looking for, here?” Pepper fired a glare at him and put a hand on her hip, slipping with practiced ease into the role of a scolding parent while Tony played the insolent child.

Steve glanced between them both and turned to the boy suddenly. “Hey, Peter, do you think you could show me how to draw that turtle from the other day? Donatello? I looked him up, but I doubt I could draw him as well as you can.” It was a ploy to get Peter out of the room and he knew it, but Pepper… she looked as though she would fly off the handle at any second, and if Peter knew one thing for certain, it was that he didn’t want to be around when it happened, so he nodded and got to his feet with shaking fingers.

Steve led him back to the elevator, to the right of which was an elegantly spiralling staircase that he hadn’t bothered with noticing previously. He could hear Pepper’s raised voice as they descended to the floor below, hugging close to Steve’s side (and the security his bulk promised) to compensate for the spikes of fear in his stomach.

The room Peter found himself in turned out to be a kitchen, decorated in brushed steel and pale granite, set up as though it was designed to entertain as much as be cooked in. There was an island in the middle, bordered by three wooden stools on one side, a stove on the far end, and three more stools on the third side, and while they clearly dominated the room, it was the comparatively small table that Steve gravitated toward.

There was a sketchbook already waiting for them, set neatly beside a box of fresh-looking coloured pencils, as though Steve had anticipated a hideaway-cum-art-lesson that morning. Peter picked out a deep green after a moment’s thought, prompting Steve to do the same with a slightly lighter shade, and looked down at the blank page Steve had flipped to. The shell was easy, a kind of superegg shape, but there were all kinds of things that he could do as far as the arms and legs went (and he had to factor in the bō, which was imperative in Donatello’s styling). He decided to just choose a stance as he went and started on the shell with a simple narration of each line. And if that narration tumbled into a rant on Donatello as a whole? Well, Steve had been the one to suggest drawing, and drawing was best done with knowledge about the subject, wasn’t it?

The sun had dipped far below the broken horizon offered by the New York cityscape before they were interrupted, leaving the page genuinely covered in the dozen or so Donatellos they had drawn since leaving Tony to endure Pepper’s wrath. It was yet another stranger—acceptable mostly because he was chatting lightly with Tony as they strode in—but this one at least didn’t seem to notice (or care about) Peter’s presence.

According to Steve’s attempt at an introduction, the stranger was called Bruce Banner. Peter was of the opinion that it didn’t matter what the man was called, seeing as he ignored Steve entirely in favour of collecting a range of ingredients from the cabinets and refrigerator, but he piped up with a greeting all the same and chewed at the edge of his sleeve once more.

Things were oddly tense for a while, no-one saying much while Bruce set to work at making dinner (Thai, he said when Steve asked, and said nothing more). Tony tried breaking the silence a few times, only to be met with steely, monosyllabic responses. He finally gave up and went to view the drawings (and Peter didn’t miss that look of confusion when Steve showed off his best Donatello, he _thought_ that Steve was holding back), though every so often he would comment on the pleasant aromas in an effort to stir up conversation.

Bruce left as soon as the food was finished, taking a full plate and a bottle of water with him and a leaving thoroughly confused Steve and Tony in his wake. Dinner itself was a much more comfortable affair, with Peter cautiously prodding Steve into putting his other drawings on display (“Next time, can you teach me?”).

By the time it was late enough for Peter go to sleep, they’d managed to work their way through platefuls of Thai food, which Bruce was going to have to make again because _wow_ , a bowl of mint-chocolate ice cream each, and a few games of checkers that left Steve baffled beyond belief as to how he had acquired quite so many red pieces.

It was almost nine, and Peter was exhausted, but when Tony and Steve bid him goodnight, he was nowhere near ready to sleep. He explored his room thoroughly instead, trying to get over the awe that had struck him upon seeing it the first time. (“Is this where I get to sleep?” And then, from Tony: “For as long as you want it, the room’s yours, kiddo.”) The room itself kept in the elegant theme of the rest of the—house? Building?—living space, all dark wood and sleek curves, but this one had clearly been put together with a child in mind.

The bed was large, large enough for Peter to flop sideways across it and not dangle off either side, and high enough off the ground to lie under comfortably while being short enough for Peter to climb onto with ease. From where he sat in the centre, he could see the entire room at once: the door on the left wall, which led to a bathroom, the door on the far wall, opening to the hallway, and the window that stared out into the forest of skyscrapers that made up Manhattan. The light switch was by the hall door, but this was acceptable so long as the simple lamp on the nightstand worked. The shadows were blocky and decidedly nonthreatening, even when he squinted, so Peter didn’t freak out when he twisted the knob on the lamp’s base and plunged into darkness. Well, not much.

As far as foster homes went, Peter had to admit that it was the nicest one he’d ever been in. It was the people he wasn’t sure about—Steve and Tony, he was fairly certain, were safe, but what about the others? The man-who-hits? If he could just come in and smack Clint like that… and Pepper, was she angry like that all the time? Tony had seemed to like Bruce, but he’d been decidedly cold. How could Tony seem so fond of a man like that? What if Peter had the wrong idea about Tony and Steve after all?

It was late by the time Peter managed to nod off, hidden in a pile of blankets and pillows and thoughts that just wouldn’t quit.


	3. Technobabble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Clint is Batman, Tony makes breakfast, and Peter doesn't understand video games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for descriptions of a panic attack and slight implications of abuse, because it'd suck just to get them thrown at you by surprise if that's the sort of thing you're triggered by.

Peter woke up and had no idea where he was, body haunted by ghosts of fingers scrambling over his skin and eyes filled with savages in the shadows on his wall. Everything had been shifted two feet to the left and he was alone, painfully alone in a world that had been tipped on its side and he was the only one upright anymore. Breathing was tricky. He managed quick pulls of air sharp enough to hack his lungs to ribbons, and the ribbons formed bows to wrap around the gifts of his choking coughs. His muscles had forgotten what moving away from danger meant; they just tensed and flexed awkwardly, and the attempts he made at pushing himself closer to the wall just made him feel weak and helpless. Peter wanted to scream, but if respiration hurt then he couldn’t imagine the agony of vocalisation, so instead he bit holes into his tongue and cried into his pillow.

He woke every morning, without fail, at seven o’clock on the nose. It was out of necessity as much as habit; who knew what would happen if someone came to retrieve him and discovered that he was lazily sleeping the day away? The mere thought made barbs of anxiety catch in his chest, driving in further with the rapid _bah-bumb_ of his heartbeat, so he forced himself to wake with the sun. Peter wasn’t able to get up, though, for a painful twenty minutes after he jerked awake—until his brain told his body to relax because he was in his borrowed bedroom, where no-one was sneaking around his room in the dead of night or the bleary stretches of dawn. It helped, but not much.

Finally, he remembered Tony’s oh-so-casual question on the lift the day prior—if the people-finder worked for Tony, who’s to say it wouldn’t work for Peter as well? He pushed himself to a sitting position, shaking rather horribly, and cast his eyes around the ceiling before asking if anyone else was awake and about.

He washed his face, used the toilet, and wrestled on clean clothes to give himself time to feign calm before padding silently to the kitchen, where the people-finder had said he’d find Clint. The something-like-a-man in question was sprawled out atop the refrigerator with a bottle of water in his hands and a smattering of bruises obscuring the right half of his face.

Peter swallowed hard and reminded himself firmly to ignore the injuries as he climbed onto one of the stools, gnawing absently at his sleeve. It was just something one didn’t talk about, especially given the non-reactions to the man-who-hits. He decided, in the end, to clear the sleep from his throat and ask, “Why are you on the fridge?”

“Why are you on the stool?” Clint fired back tiredly, cracking open his left eye. It was a fair enough question, he thought—but maybe Clint thought Peter wasn’t supposed to be on the stool the way Peter thought Clint wasn’t supposed to be on the refrigerator. He slid down carefully and stood on his tiptoes instead, tapping his fingers lightly across the island as he stared up at Clint.

“How did you even get up there?”

Clint managed to open his other eye and rolled them, taking a sip of his water as he resigned himself to wakefulness. “I flew. I’m talented that way.”

“People can’t fly.” He should know—when he was four, he’d jumped off of the shed at the group home in an attempt at flight only to be rewarded with a broken wrist and two hours of a simultaneously furious and distraught Miss Baker.

“Batman can fly.”

Peter frowned, shaking his head vigorously. “Batman can’t fly; he just has a special cape. And, besides, you’re not Batman.”

“How do you know?” Clint grinned, lopsided due to the one-sided swelling.

“’Cause Batman’s name is Bruce Wayne, and yours is Clint.”

“For the comics, sure, but why would I give my secret identity away to comic-book makers?” Tony shuffled in then, rather remarkably resembling a zombie with half-blinking eyes and steps that left his feet not quite leaving the ground, and bypassed them both in favour of acquiring a cup of coffee.

“Don’t let him lie to you, Pete,” Tony yawned as he waited for his cup to fill. “He’s a bird, not a bat.”

“Birds fly too.”

“Birds are not bats, and you are not Batman,” Peter said sternly, crossing his arms on the granite.

“Then I’m Birdman!”

“Birdbrain,” corrected Tony as he pushed one of Clint’s legs out of the way to open the refrigerator. Peter craned his neck to follow the movements—shredded cheese, eggs, broccoli, butter, milk, bacon, followed by a glass bowl, a whisk, and a frying pan, all set in a neat pile on the counter—and flinched slightly at every unnecessarily loud noise Tony made, which wound up being most noises.

“I think you’re supposed to crack them first,” he said quietly when Tony set the pan on the stove and put a pair of eggs inside. The response was to loudly whisk air in the glass bowl. “T-Tony? Sorry, but I really don’t think you’re doing this right.”

“Nope, this is pre _cise_ ly how breakfast is made.” He was really very certain that it wasn’t, but Peter managed to hold his tongue by picking at one of the small holes his teeth had made in the sleeve of his shirt. “Steve! Good morning.”

“That’s the fourth time you’ve said ‘good morning’ to me today.” Steve patted Peter’s shoulder as he passed, nicked the mug from Tony’s hand to take a sip of his coffee (blatantly ignoring the squawk of protest), and raised his eyebrows at the sorry attempt at food-making.

“I retain my right to say good morning so long as it is morning-time and not awful, and it’s currently both. Besides, _zao shang hao_ just doesn’t have the right ring to it.” Tony sat on the stool beside the one Peter had been using upon receiving his coffee back, gesturing vaguely to Steve as if to say _See? I told you this is how breakfast is made._ The boy shook his head in response, hesitantly edging up onto the stool to see if Tony would shout. He didn’t.

The following twenty minutes found Natasha appearing silently beside Peter (and he didn’t nearly scream, because that would be childish and six years old is not an age where one is allowed to behave as a child, thank you), watching with interest as Steve magically produced omelettes, and Bruce edging in to procure a mug of tea. Natasha agreed on Tony’s assessment of Clint’s superhero title being Birdbrain, while Bruce maintained a wall of indifference by never looking up from his tea.

Somewhere along the way, Tony had pressed a cup of orange juice into Peter’s hands. He was staring into the liquid with interest, wondering what Bruce found so consuming and whether or not it was exclusive to tea, when Steve slid him a plate. While he wasn’t particularly hungry—it wasn’t as though breakfast was a luxury Peter was often allowed—there was always that nagging question in the back of his mind of _when will my next meal be?_ , so he managed to clear most of it off before nudging it toward Natasha and returning to his juice.

That was when Clint, unknowingly prompting chaos, announced that he was going to play the Xbox and Peter, bewildered, asked if they actually had one. This led to the revelation that Peter, despite being a young boy in a modern era, had never actually played a video game. Ever.

So he found himself planted in the living room with a funky-looking controller in his hands, an erroneously titled game ( _combat wasn’t really spelled with a K, was it?_ ) on a nearly obscenely large television screen, and five shocked adults behaving like children around him (well, okay, it was really three—Bruce, while clearly surprised, kept himself distant across the room, and Steve mumbled something about _finally someone else who doesn’t know how to technology_ ). Clint called the first round and switched easily between screens until selecting a ninja in a black and yellow outfit (“ _SCORPION!_ ”) as his character, directing Peter until the boy chose a similar ninja in blue.

When the actual round started, Peter just stared at the screen with a perplexed frown, testing the buttons several steps away from Clint’s character. “I don’t understand,” he sighed, cautiously setting the controller down on his lap. “How come my guy wants to fight yours?”

“They just… do,” Clint shrugged. He vaguely recalled there being some sort of archenemy backstory, but wasn’t certain enough to say for sure why the two ninjas were at war. “Is it important?”

Peter chewed his lower lip and nodded, so Clint pressed a combination of buttons sending them back to the character selection screen and chose the Joker. That was a story Peter knew—Batman was his selection, along with a mumbled “bats aren’t birds”—though he was fairly certain that the Joker never managed to beat Batman in any of the stories he had heard second-hand from Wade.

Watching the people proved much more interesting than watching the game itself. Steve pressed the buttons with a great deal of care, constantly glancing down to check what he was doing, and gave up his controller with a shrug and a smile when Superman thrashed the Green Lantern. Natasha looked far more focused on the job at hand—each move was done precisely, nothing at all like the random mashing of buttons Peter had preferred—and managed a “ _FLAWLESS VICTORY!_ ” with an inappropriately clothed woman called Kitana. Clint relinquished his controller to Bruce with an exaggerated pout and made a point to nudge Natasha with his foot every several seconds.

By the time they switched to Mario Kart (around lunch, when Bruce and Tony cheerfully announced that they were off to _science_ ), Peter had won a single match. He may have won more if he hadn’t insisted on picking villains and purposefully losing so they “got what they deserved,” but he was very proud of his one win. Mario Kart levelled the playing field significantly, considering Clint and Natasha were too busy trying to hinder the other to pay much attention to Peter or Steve. That eventually dissolved into the former pair wrestling over a stolen controller, so Steve suggested something a little less competitive. LittleBigPlanet did not fit that description in practice, but it _was_ wildly fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For any of you who are wondering...probably none of you, I'll admit...Subzero and Scorpion actually are enemies in the MK canon. Hanzo Hasashi (Scorpion) killed a man by the name of Bi-Han (who, at the time, was Subzero and is now Noob Saibot), leaving Bi-Han's younger brother Kuai Liang to take up the title of Subzero and plot his revenge on Scorpion. Furthermore, Subzero's clan (Lin Kuei) is bitter rivals with Scorpion's (Shirai Ryu). The more you know...


End file.
